Mini-Review: I'm pretty sure there is a brilliant movie hiding in a bad one here. It brazenly illustrates the religiosity we all knew hid in films like Close Encounters and 2001, as well as Apocalypse-genre films. That it pisses off most everyone with its theological bait-and-switch is fucking fascinating.
Mini-Review: SOTD is truncated, incomplete, and barely known - but it is the one Bunuel film I continually return to. This has something genuine to say about the falseness of altruism, the relationship between Man and God, and the death of the Enchanted Age. Or I'm reading too much into it. God bless Bunuel.
Mini-Review: When this won the Oscar for Best Picture I threw my car keys at the screen. Spawning a horde of also bad inter-narrative faux-documentary melodramas, the story is akin to intellectual masturbation: it feels good in the moment, but no matter what you do is not as good as the real thing (in this case: thinking). Crash has caustic contempt for its audience, with no real moral other than we are all racist (Yes! You can be too!), so deal. Fuck you, movie.
Mini-Review: (Japanese Longer Edit): Sukiyaki + Western + Django = Red Harvest + Glass Key + Yojimbo + Fistfull of Dollars + Last Man Standing + Youth of the Beast + Django = Gangster + Jidai-geki + Western + Spaghetti Western + Yakuza + Modern Bullet Ballet = USA + Italy + Japan = Miike + Tarantino = Postmodern Selfenfranchising Clusterfuck = A statement about the evolution of narrative and its cultural origins. Maybe. At least it's fun.
Mini-Review: Show summary: punk-era Sogo Ishii raped Andy Warhol, shat a son, that son married Freud's mother, took LSD and decided to rewrite Neon Genesis Evangelion. And that only scratches the surface of this surreal and ultimately hypnotic descent into the existential macabre, but one painted with bold primaries and Looney Tunes logic. There's even an extended South Park reference! and is therefore pure gold.
Mini-Review: One of the most effective silent films I've ever seen, and notoriously underrated. Does it really dismiss spirituality away with reason in its final chapter? Or does the whole film basically enchant its audience anyway? ~ Really, one circular joke that can be viewed many times with differing interpretations.
Mini-Review: "It is easy to go down to hell; Night and Day the Gates of Dark Death stand wide; But to climb back up again, to retrace ones steps to the open air, there lies the problem, the difficult task." -Virgil, The Aeneid, Book VI. Yet, "The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." -John Milton. The film's pluses and minuses lie in the contradiction.
Mini-Review: Fascinating as it completely summarizes Kurosawa's previous work, going so far as to copy, shot-for-shot, a glorious scene from Pulse. But it's not so much a retread as a potent embodiment of the director's obsessions. The murders are merely a parenthesis in a story of urban decay, moral morass (pun intended) and a worldview - closer here than ever before - about to teeter off the edge towards a personal and grand apocalypse. Very recommended.
Mini-Review: Pixar is the only American animation studio that can take some of our most iconic characters, have them swim in existentialism, get tortured by a villain who refuses redemption, and send them to a literal hell and back - but do it with such undeniable tact, grace and aplomb nobody even bats an eye. Actually, it might make the ending that much more stirring. It's a good thing there are credits videos for those... um, other people, clearly... who teared up.
Mini-Review: I can see it now: When I die and go to heaven, after I pass over the threshold and catch up with all the souls from life - who will I see but Bunuel, sipping a dry martini and arguing passionately with Michael over some arbitrary theological definition of the Eucharist. I'll introduce myself, we'll talk about his art. Then he'll take me aside, out of earshot of the saints, and whisper earnestly, "How the fucking hell did I get here?"